New iPhone keyboard ‘senses tabletop vibrations’

A new iPhone keyboard will allow users to tap on a tabletop in order to type.

According to Swiss designer Florian Krautli, who invented the Vibrative Virtual Keyboard, the device uses the accelerometer in an iPhone 4 to sense the vibrations created when fingers hit a table and works out which ‘key’ the typist is trying to touch.

A Swiss designer has invented a way to turn any flat surface into an iPhone keyboard (PA)

Once the device is installed, it must be ‘trained’ before it can be used, after which a paper keyboard is placed under the iPhone.

Once this is done, the consumer can, in theory, type out a message on the table top without having to touch the smartphone’s screen.

At the moment, the design is still in its early stages and initial tests of the prototype suggests that the phone user needs to apply a lot of pressure to the ‘keys’ before the typing is sensed by the iPhone.

The Telegraph reported that, at the moment, the virtual keyboard gets the letters right just 80 per cent of the time, and even Krautli admits that it is more of a ‘proof of concept’ than a commercially plausible product at this point in time.

However , it is a highly innovative approach considering that previous software keyboards relied on scanner or touchscreen surfaces.

In theory, the Vibrative Virtual Keyboard should be able to transform any flat surface into a keyboad for the iPhone.

Krautli came up with the idea while studying for his computing master’s degree at Goldsmith’s, University of London.